21st century masculinity

Masculinity: It is an annoying and toxic prison, but I also think that more "scholars" need to accurately discuss why masculinity exists the way it does in today's world. 

Too often, in my reading of masculinity, and especially the toxic type, I tend to run into the same tired ideas again and again. Most of the ideas seem to conjure up this image of masculinity that, it seems to me, they don't entirely understand. Why, the college educated scholars wonder, do boys want to be so masculine, and mean? Why do they worship gangsters and violent fighters? Why do they try to pretend they have no emotions, and that all they want to do is work out and become strongmen at the gym? Why, why, why?

It's almost as though, to these 'scholars', masculinity is all arising from some mysterious, toxic river, a river which they've never seen and just can't figure out.

They occasionaly make the comment that, yes, they realize toxic masculinity seems to be dying out more and more across the decades, but again, they can't quite figure out why. At times, it's amost as though they think the dying out of masculinity is entirely dependent upon the random personal choices of "non-conformists". I.e. MIllions of totally 'random' people---boys, mostly -- who suddenly wake up and decide to reject certain aspects of masculinity. IT is explained to us how brave these boys are, for doing things that are not masculine. How courageous! Et cetera.

SOmehow, in all of this,however, whats never discussed, is the basic organization of our society, or the type of technological advancements our society has been making, over the years. Somehow, whats never discussed, is a big topic like, say, jobs, and what type of jobs, are generally available for men and women of all types, in this society. We are seemingly never told, for example, how the types of jobs a society has or does not have available, might just effect the type of mentality that society and its people have, around something like masculinity or femininity.

Curiously enough, of course, it seems to be the mysterious case that, in 2018, our society is still not quite advanced enough, to have completely rid itself, of some really hard jobs. Yes, we've gotten rid of a lot of them, but there are still just enough left, to keep some "old school" ideas of masculinity, lurking in the corner. To put it simply, those few really hard jobs left, they tend to need really hard people, to complete them, in our time. There are, after all, a fair amount of very dangerous jobs that are still going around. Jobs that need a serious amount of strength. Strength that, for the most part, only a biological male generally seems to have.  Just like only biological males had it 1,000 years ago, before the technology existed at all.

The way I tend to explain it to people is that a society is really only as strong as its "weakest link". Ironically enough, depending how you look at it, the hardest physical jobs of our society in 2018 (and the fact that we still have so many of them around) could, and should be, viewed, as our weakest link. It is, after all, our biggest connection to the simple , dreary past. It is a sign of the fact that we have not yet developed enough intelligent tech to basically accomplish every difficult --and not so difficult --- task for us. Which, as far as I'm concerned, is something we should all actively want to do. I don't know about my reader--but I certainly don't like the idea of having to rely on some strong guy on horseback, for example, to deliver this exact essay to you. I like that the Internet is handling all that hard work for society. Completely. I like that I can buy a snowblower, instead of having to shovel. I like that we can build a bridge, and lift huge parts of it, with a crane, instead of with the hands of 100 men, or however many it would take.

In any case, the funny thing about the bottom half of our society, which is still somewhat trapped doing all these hard, shitty, and dangerous jobs, is that it actually all effects the top and middle half, much more than they would ever like to admit. In other words, the fact that men in the lower classes are still very much forced to perform or aspire to jobs that require physical stength and "masculinity", also greatly effects the idea men in the upper classes have about their own masuclinity -- even if they never need to worry about being knocked out in a street fight, or lift anything heavy. The most curious thing about a man in the middle or upper class, who works in an air conditioned office and wears shiny shoes all day, but whose also obsessed with a masculinity he doesn't really need, is that he could essentially dress and act however he wanted (and still get his office job done), yet he still refuses to.

Why?

Simple answer: Even if he never even interacts with the dreary bottom half of our society, he still knows they are there, and they still make him feel, one imagines, pretty strange. So he tries to keep up a bit of a competition with them, and in some sense, his willingness to still adhere to the masculinity prison (even though he does not need to, I stress) can actually be seen as an almost noble renunciation of something that, again, he knows the lower man actually can't even afford to do yet.

Let's speak plainly: The upper class man exists, generally, far beyond the world of big, dirty work boots. He doesn't have to shovel his own driveway in the winter. He doesn't need to dig ditches or lift heeavy boxes. He doesn't need to descend into a coalmine. Going to a vicious prison,  like the sort the Americans can't seem to get rid of in their country, probably isn't even a marginal concern for him.

 He literally sits in an air conditioned office, and works on a keyboard, in a safe and well-patrolled neighborhood. He could technically get his work done in a $1500 dress and a pair of high heels. This is something most men in  a still fairly large number of lower jobs can't hope for.

Of course, having said that, don't think that there aren't some pretty laid back jobs in the lower class, because, believe it or not, but there are plenty.In fact, our society is so advanced at this point, that even in the lower class now , there are numerous jobs where you could wear any outfit and still get it done (i.e. cashier, waiter, etc). And yet again, because of the fact that those few really hard jobs still exist, which rely solely on strength, we see that it's not enough. After all, even if you work an easy going low class job, like being a cashier at some crappy store, you still have to live in a neighborhood thats infested by all sorts of street fighters and gung ho physical types. You also have to compete with them for women.

So, what we are really seeing right now, is that, until the day comes when we find a way to eliminate basically ALL the physically demanding jobs of old, we probably also won't see a society that feels totally comfortable with rejecting "masculinity", or the oh so boring "masculine dress code". Because the real hard truth about movements like feminism is that, judging by the historical time period in which it floated up to the surface, it would seem that feminism and gender non-conformity has mostly popped into existence thanks to technology becoming advanced. As depressing as it sounds, if all the tech literally evaporated tomorrow, and we went back to the Stone Age, feminism would disappear with it. Gender roles, and extremely harsh ones at that, would be back in vogue. 100%. It should not be seen as total coincidence that feminism popped up after the TV was born. It should not be seen as total coincidence that the Womens suffrage movement happened only after Samuel Colt invented the first fairly complex gun. Technology and advanced weapons (that dont generally rely on strength, like a sword and shield did) are the real reasons things have changed for women. It's not just some random fluke.

Yet,as I said before, if you read the articles, thats often exaclty how its always seen. Feminism, in the popular imagination, literally seems to be thought of as something thats not at all connected to the advancement of tech, but instead something that just "randomly happened". As though women one day woke up and just randomly had some strange ideas, unlike ever before. As though women one day just "randomly", for no discernible reason, became different. This isn't what happened. At all. What happened was the tech advanced, and different women occurred directly as a result of that tech. JUst like different men, who couldn't care less for old school "strength and grit" masculinity, are now also popping up left and right. They are there because of tech. Take away the tech and they go away too.

I find this is incredibly important to point out, because it puts on display, immediately, just how technologically backwards so much of the conservative movement really is. After all, not only is the conservative movement obsessed with the old masculinity codes, but it also seems to obsessed with maintaining them. This is a really bad thing, if you like tech. If instead you don't like tech, and you eagerly await some catastrophe where it all gets swept away, and we are back in the Stone Age, then I don't know what to tell you.

Personally speaking, after having lived most of my life in an American ghetto now, I can't wait for the tech to get better, and better, and better. I'm dead tired of masculinity. Quite literally.

Get it?